Welcome to the home of the campaign for an independent, professionally led national college of social work across the UK. This website is dedicated to supporting the development of a fully independent national College of Social Work which will seek to improve and support social work by providing leadership by and for the profession.For several decades social workers have been my colleagues on the ground floor, doing the 9-5 turn and more. I once started a talk to a local constabulary on service development and thought the reception was a bit odd: the introduction met with a frosty tone in high summer. Things settled when I revealed I was a nurse, not a social worker. The audience highlighted the need - this was well over a decade ago - for more effective out-of-hours access to social work and mental health service colleagues. Things have improved markedly and with ongoing re-organisation pressures on the NHS and social services, the need for radical change has now shifted to social work itself.
The College of Social Work will lead the development of the profession and represent it in discussions with organisations that regulate, train, work with, and are affected by social work.
For further information on BASW or the campaign for the national college of social work, please visit http://www.basw.co.uk for the latest news, information and updates.
Take part in discussions online in BASW's member-only forum at MyBASW ExchangeIf you would like to get in touch with your local BASW office, please find our contact details at http://www.basw.co.uk/contact
I do hope the new College of Social Work will consider the health career model as a potential foundational and lifelong learning resource. The qualities and relevance of the model to the social work profession are manifold, and include the model's being:
- person-centred -
- the model is also socially oriented (25% of the model concerns the 'social' agenda);
- recognizes the oppositional experience of person - state / law;
- can support reflective models of practice for new learners and established staff;
- the vulnerable can be represented there - infants, adults, older adults ...;
- multidisciplinary in scope, or phrased another way - discipline neutral;
- multi-contextual in scope, individual (self), group (family, community), service (resources, policy), budgets (financial), recovery, strengths, information-education, quality and outcomes (reporting);
- a currency to support interprofessional education and training, and -
- prior to the above provides a tool for curriculum development.
